How to be a Modern Marketer in the Age of Data And Analytics

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Modern marketers have what seems like an ever-changing and highly demanding role in today’s B2B world. There are big challenges to address - including ABS (Account Based Selling), the role of analytics, and application of AI. In this episode of The Social Business Engine podcast, I spoke to Victor Belfor, SVP of Channel Sales and Business Development at Conversica, to discuss what he’s seeing in his interaction with CMOs and marketers across a variety of industries.

Today’s CMOs Have the Most Integrated Role in the Company

It’s not easy being the Chief Marketing Officer at a company today. That’s because digital channels have blurred the lines between marketing and sales.

Modern marketers are tasked with producing results for multiple stakeholders within the organization, which requires additional expertise. They also need to integrate with product marketing, tie directly into sales, adapt to ABS (account based selling), and more. Top all this off with the reality of reporting directly to the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), or even the CEO in many cases, and you can see how it’s become a tall order for anyone.

Belfor says that the role demands a person who's willing to embrace the new mindset of modern marketing, along with advancing toolsets, and apply different tech stacks to produce the results the company needs.

But more than anything, the CMO need to have the passion drive and grit to be a marketing evangelist who can shape company culture to embrace and support the new role that marketing plays in the digital economy.

How to Cope With Marketing Difficulties Caused by Increasing Analytics

Better analytics is undoubtedly a good thing = every business needs to know the data behind what's working and what's not. But the ever-growing tech stack is producing challenges too - how do you take flows from all the tech stack solutions and interrelate them to produce a coherent marketing plan that is data-driven? How can marketers measure what really matters to the business?

There’s also the plethora of channels from which leads are coming in - events, webinars, social media, field marketing, PPC, SEO, and even from employees. How do you run cohort analysis and how do you track attribution from all these unique sources? How do you track costs?

A good tech stack can start chipping away at it, but it also requires consistent effort to change company culture, and embrace marketing’s expanded strategic role in the organization.

Can AI Solve the Problems of Modern Marketing?

AI has grabbed a lot of attention, and you might be tempted to say that AI is - at least in part - what's putting the pressure on modern marketers. But Victor is convinced that AI is not the cause of the marketing chasm.

Victor says that the problem, when it comes to AI, is that while many are interested in experimenting with this new technology, they're also wary, either because they don’t know how to use it properly or are feeling threatened by it. They want to experiment but are not completely certain if the outcomes of using AI will be better than what they are currently doing.

Victor says dipping your toes into the water of AI may not be the best way to get started. Why? Because with AI, the larger your dataset, or time of use, the better your results will be, which, in turn, will give you a better idea of how AI can benefit your marketing efforts. You simply can’t accomplish that with a short-duration test, or a small dataset.

Three Specific Use Cases for AI Implementation in Marketing

Victor says that there are three primary areas where AI can benefit the modern marketing approach…

Analytics - AI enables you to build models, predict what your best customers will look like, and analyze your pipeline to anticipate what deals are most likely to close. All of this can be done without human bias or false assumptions.